Southern Illinois Coyote Hunts Bring Radical Protesters

Anti-hunting radicals have made themselves quite the spectacle in Southern Illinois in recent weeks. They proudly puttered into town in their Priuses, bringing their signs, slogans and social media posts to try to stop a pair of coyote hunting events. Not surprisingly the hunter-haters failed to stop the outings, but they did succeed in making themselves look like fools.

“Please donot do event killing coyotes . They are important to our echo system.”
– As posted by Lisa Darnell at the “For the Love of Wolves” blog

X-RING CUSTOM’s “Coyote Competition” saw its sixth year a few short weeks ago. Based in Toledo, Illinois, proprietor Dave Clark’s event has two-person hunt teams register on a Friday. From there, they go out and shoot themselves some coyotes. Clark’s crew holds check-ins to ensure the “freshness” of the kills, and to weigh the buggers.

Publicity for his event also reached animal rights lovers.

His phone rang off the hook for weeks ahead of the shoot. People threatened him, which he says made him laugh as he hung up the phone. Some tried to cajole or even plead with him. Others called him names.

The hunt went on, though, as not even calls to local government were effective.

In the end, the winning team of Jake Hewing and Kyle Steele from Greenup, Illinois came to win. They shot themselves over a quarter ton of coyote. The winning pair clobbered 17 animals weighing a total of 545.45 pounds. This year, Clark saw 74 teams participate and they harvested a total of 111 animals, setting competition records left and right.

Meanwhile, Clark told me that forty-some telephone messages greeted him the next Monday morning. Some animal rights lovers misunderstood the dates of the event from social media posts. But their calls came a day late and 111 coyotes short.

The Southern Illinois Predator Challenge

About a week later, the third annual Southern Illinois Predator Challenge, took place. Organized by Paul Browne, it brings in some of the best hunters from across the region. Not surprising, considering the $6500 in donated prizes and a 100% payout of entry fees.

Galvanized by the carnage of a week before, anti-hunters brought in reinforcements from the HSUS – Humane Society of the United States to lead them. HSUS’s Illinois director Marc Ayers came down to lend his gravitas to this event in person.

The super sophisticated animal lovers came to educate the locals on the barbaric nature of hunting. Yes, really.

While their message might play to the hippie crowd in San Francisco or Berkeley, these malcontents came to God’s country in Southern Illinois.

“Who are those people, mommy?”

The hunter haters truly believed they could stop the contest. They showed up on the town square to gin up public outrage for the event.

The local media, excited to have a genuine news story, showed up. Reports pegged the attendance at about two dozen protesters. Photos, on the other hand, suggest far fewer in attendance.

While hunters culled the coyote herd afield, the protesters carried their signs providing entertainment to area residents.

The placard-carrying PETA-types failed to get people excited. Instead of ginning up outrage, the would-be rabble rousers faced a lot of stares, scorn and laughter from the perplexed locals.

HSUS Illinois Director Marc Ayers

HSUS’s Marc Ayers gleefully told the local newspaper scribe that the hunts “do not reduce the coyote population or protect livestock or wildlife from depredation.”

Come again? Yes, he actually said that killing coyotes does not reduce the coyote population. Can you spell “fake news”?

SIPC organizer Paul Browne sees things much differently, relying on science and logic instead of emotions. “There’s a lot of coyotes,” he told the Benton Evening News. “If you don’t keep the ecosystem in balance, everything is affected.”

From the town square, the anti-hunting types burned more fossil fuels driving to the check-in location. They trespassed on private property, shouted profanities and struck participants’ vehicles as they left the event. All of this according to Paul Browne as reported in Disclosure News Online…

• The protesters, upon arriving at the private location of the property, (while the hunters were inside the association building) walked onto personally owned private property, without any permission, totally trespassing and violating Illinois law. They illegally removed the tarp on the trailer to expose the legally harvested coyotes, so they could take their illegal pictures to flaunt on their social media. It is a total fraud and illegal act!

• The aggressive and trespassing animal activists verbally attacked the participants when they left the private property after the event ended. The protesters screamed profanity at them as they left the parking lot and illegally hit their trucks and vehicles with their protest signs. The participants remained professional, ethical, and respectful of the law at all times. It is important to point out that not a single participant challenged the rude and fanatical protesters who were committing illegal vandalism on the participants vehicles.

• Because the hunters did not get “baited” or “coerced” into the animal activists wishful confrontation after the event, they went onto social media and called them cowards and boasted about their “win”. The protested totally failed in their effort to stop or even interrupt this totally legal, ethical, and moral hunting activity.

In the end, the anti-hunting agitators experienced an epic failure. 74 hunters harvested 68 coyotes as part of Browne’s Southern Illinois Predator Challenge. This despite the best efforts of “animal rights” activists to stop it.

Coyotes are clever, adaptable animals that once roamed the western two-thirds of North America. A determined federal government extermination campaign in the 1940s and ’50s led to the killing of more than 6 million of them. But in recent decades, coyotes have made a comeback, expanding beyond their historic range. They’ve even taken up residence in Chicago, which hosts upward of 2,000.

Many people, however, still regard them with suspicion and contempt. Mark Twain contributed to this view by describing the coyote as a “slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton” with a “furtive and evil eye” and “a general slinking expression all over.” The belief that the only good coyote is a dead coyote persists among some people in some places.

…Trying to protect farm animals — or pets — by indiscriminately killing these predators is a losing strategy. A better approach is to remove food sources that might attract coyotes, while taking measures to protect the animals they might attack.

About what you’d expect from a bunch of big city elitists. After all, these are the same people who believe that good guys with guns don’t stop bad people with evil in their hearts.

Yeah… I live in northern Illinois and there those little buggers more or less infest my neighborhood. They got my neighbor’s cat a few years back and I don’t take my dog into the park without a sidearm on me. (Gomer can handle himself, but I’m not taking chances.) These eco-hippie scumbags need a good beating. Fun fact, you hit my car with your sign, I hit your with my car.

Aurora Sportsmen’s Club down in Waterman immediately comes to mind. They run a practical rifle shoot third Saturday of every month and a practical precision rifle shoot in the non-freezing months on top of that.

If coyotes are as bad up there as they are Texas, Good for yall. I remember a few years ago, quite a few counties were offering money ($4 for the tail as proof) for hunters to cull the numbers. But whats worse here is the hog infestation, the same counties were offering $2 per left hog ear. That’s what these leftist ignorant retards don’t get, certain animals become little more that oversized vermin and must be culled in order to KEEP the eco-system in balance. Coyotes go after pets and live stock and hogs destroy farm land by the acre in no time flat.

Funny thing is.. both the coyote advocates and hunters were recording each other the whole time. If coyote advocates were hitting cars and spouting vulgarites.. where the video evidence? Pretty sure a child wrote this article. Sounds like a bunch of butt hurt hunters crying..

Yeah… I’m sure… Here’s the reality. These fucktards need to be taken out into the street and beaten. The 1st amendment protects your right to protest your government, it doesn’t give you the right to get in my face. The latter is a great way to get a bullet in the ass.

There’s a name for that which I can’t remember at the moment — something-or-other focus. It’s a condition that hits some people who focus extensively on one thing to the point they actually lose the ability to see the importance of other things. I’ve seen it in action and it can be scary; one example is a bureaucrat who was so focused on saving a certain wetland plant he totally failed to see that he was damaging its natural controls and as a result harming both livestock and wildlife, another is one of his co-workers who was so focused on not allowing a road through a wetland that he failed to see that the road placement that resulted in the destruction of twice the wetland he was trying to protect.

People who get that tightly focused on an issue because they deeply care about it end up more dangerous than people who are completely ignorant.

These are the same progressive idiots that will champion abortion, protest the death penalty, and want us all to give up the 2A along with any other amendment they don’t like. Screw them why don’t they stay in NYC and protest the govt’s war on rats.Save the rats. In my state the overpopulation of coyotes is wiping out the deer herd. Time to take up coyote hunting.

Harming the ECHO system? Doesn’t protect wildlife from DEPREDATION? Looks like these protesters should spend more time in grammar school and less time banging cars with misspelled and grammatically incorrect signs . . .

Depredation is a word and if you don’t have a dictionary then type “Define: Depredation” into your search bar.
LOL, so if you stand by your comment I suggest you see if you can enroll back into your local grammar school.

Simple response to these dimwits: hand out pictures of the babies and little kids who have been savaged by coyotes.

An in-depth response would explain that since we have screwed up the balance of every ecosystem on the continent, we have a responsibility — I would say a God-given responsibility — to serve as predators where necessary to restore balance. Where we fail to do so, the result is massive suffering and death of wildlife, often by starvation and disease they would never face otherwise.

In ‘you can’t own a gun’ JAPAN the gov. is now going to allow hunting of deer, etc. to cull the herds because of the massive damage done to the farmers. Another bunch of assholes that never looked beyond the end of their nose; did they think that animals practiced ‘birth control’?

To be fair to Japan, they have cultural issues with private weapons ownership. Something to do with the samurai class having had the legal right to decapitate any non-samurai caught with anything more dangerous than a knife on the spot for the better part of several centuries.

Hell, it was even worse than that: any samurai could legally murder ANY non samurai for any reason, including recreation or to test the edge of their sword.

Your point is valid though. Up until the 1800s, the Japanese lived under fuedal lords, and there was a strong, cultural sense of duty to those lords. So much so that it was commonly regarded that the absolute WORST thing someone could do was to rebel against their liege lord, no matter the circumstance. Even today, they have no real concept of legitimate revolt. If a revolt occurs, by definition it is illegitimate.

Generally speaking, you actually can hit someone with your vehicle if they’re trying to attack or stop you. Though, as the above poster noted, youd be well within your rights to make a citizens arrest which would be very embarrassing for them. Nothing says you can’t carry around hand cuff or zip ties.

I have performed citizens arrests. Handcuffs and zip ties are a bad idea. The person can claim all sorts of brutality and mistreatment to include civil suits for damages. If you cannot show professional level training with restraints in court, don’t use them.

Inform the person you’re making a citizens arrest. If they resist or flee they are simply adding charges, potentially felony level, to otherwise pretty low level misdameaners.

If you perform the arrest, be prepared to make court apperaeances. In one case I had to also make dmv hearings.

I support animal population control. Coyotes are beautiful creatures, but too many of them, just like deer, can get dangerous. What these dumb, mostly ugly, middle aged women who are no longer desired by men, think is that any animal is just like a cat or a dog and needs love and care from a person. Remember that woman who had a pet chimpanzee and it ripped her face off? Yeah, it’s those types who protest the natural act of hunting and animal population control because they don’t live in reality and read the fake news.

I was talking to my Daughter-in-law’s uncle and he told me that coyotes are now coming into his barnyard every night. He said I am welcome to set up shop any time I want to solve this problem. Generally. If you shoot a few the rest move away from humans.

Yodel Dogs are vermin. Count me among the The only good Coyote is a dead one camp.

That being said, Mr. Ayers may well be correct in that hunting may not reduce the population in the long term. Like Rock Doves (i.e. the common pigeon or “flying rat”) they have a tendency to breed into the available space, so killing a few hundred just means that they will whelp a few hundred more.

To really reduce the population a bounty system needs to be reintroduced.

“A better approach is to remove food sources that might attract coyotes, while taking measures to protect the animals they might attack.”

Removing their food source would mean either keeping your pets indoors at all times or moving away. Protecting them means shooting the damn yotes dead when and wherever you see them. These people would rather your pets get shredded with no repercussions to the predator, just so they can feel good. Complete ignorance.

I’m 100% certain that if you “remove” coyotes’ food sources successfully, the coyotes will starve. I love how these liberal “nature lovers” think slowly starving coyotes is more humane somehow than a quick death from a hunter.

My service dog was attacked by coyotes in a county park natural area. A wildlife gal I talked to afterward — she saw the Ruger on my hip and was interested in why I was wearing it — said to NOT shoot to kill if the ‘yotes come after him again — she said shoot to terrorize by wounding and inflicting pain. The explanation was that killing one just meant there would be another one to take its place and still not respect humans and their companions, but inflicting pain and terror would teach them their place.

I’ve never ever shot to just wound before, but after what they did to my dog, I think I can handle that. Maybe shots to the butt….

A few years ago, my child and dog were playing in my back yard after dark. (It was winter and dark by 6:30 p.m.) My child was at least 4 feet tall and my dog was a ripped (muscular) pit bull that weighed 55 pounds. Without any prior indication, a small pack of coyotes started yipping their “dinner time!” call to alert other coyotes in the area. As the pack started to move in, my daughter started yelling and clapping her hands while our pit bull started growling. This precipitated a 20 second stand-off during which the coyotes continued to size up my child and dog. Finally, the coyotes decided to break-off. My child then hurried into our home, extremely scared.

The next year, someone shot and killed a 53 pound coyote within 70 miles of my home. The following year after that, a pack of coyotes took down and killed a healthy horse which was part of a County Sheriff mounted division.

These coyotes, which are actually part wolf, are quite dangerous. I will kill them on sight … as will just about everyone else who lives within 20 miles of me.

The wildlife people here said wolf blood isn’t that much a problem, that the real problem is when coyotes mix and breed with feral dogs. I didn’t quite follow the explanation, but they made the point by telling me that anyone who sees coyotes running with feral dogs can get a permit, free, to kill all of them because once they’ve run with feral dogs they don’t unlearn bad habits.

We’re trying to discover if there are feral dogs with the batch that hurt my dog. If so, a local shooting group I know is all ready to do heavy sweeps through the ‘yotes territory and hit the “reset” button (so to speak) (though one idea is to put dogs out inside enclosures the ‘yotes can’t get through, and do some tree-sitting — that way if we miss any, the survivors ought to get the idea that humans and their friends are off limits).

Thanks for noting the horse attack — I’m going to start suggesting to the riders in the area that they start packing.

About 2 years ago I was walking my 27 pound mutt after dark in southern Illinois and in the city. A large coyote approached us and we had a stare down (me and the coyote) for a full 3 or 4 minutes. My dog was sniffing the ground and thankfully didn’t notice it. I am 6′-0″ & 190 pounds and until then had no idea a coyote would be so bold. I was in a subdivision so didn’t want to make noise unless it became necessary but it appeared it was going to. Eventually it turned and walked away but as we continued on our path I kept checking behind us and that S.O.B. had turned around and started following us again. We were close to home and made it home without incident but it did change my perception of them and their potential danger.

Just clean up the remains of your much loved pet and that will change your mind for good. They used to have a coyote bitch in heat enter our neighborhood and they would gang up on the male dogs that went to investigate. Even some female dogs would go out to see the action. We lost 20-30 dog a year, can’t even count the cats.
It took a few years of trapping and shooting to tame the population in those hills. Now the people that built new homes in those hills are complaining.

…Trying to protect farm animals — or pets — by indiscriminately killing these predators is a losing strategy. A better approach is to remove food sources that might attract coyotes, while taking measures to protect the animals they might attack.

Lets take this quote and change some of the words to see if we can come up with a soulution to Chitown’s problems….. hmmm

I wonder if they realize that coyotes are not a natural part of the ecosystem in Eastern states. Coyotes are the illegal immigrants of the animal world. They are crowding out and exterminating the current population of red foxes. Gray foxes get by a little bit better since they can climb trees to escape the coyotes. The coyotes prey upon native birds reducing their populations. The Eastern US would be better off without the coyotes that have currently invaded it.

I’d forgotten that. I remember learning in a 400-level course called human ecology that humans inflicted coyotes on themselves in the east by pretty much eliminating the top predators like wolves and even bears that normally kept the coyotes out of the territory. A ranger I met in southern Oregon said he really wants the wolves back because for every wolf there will be a score fewer coyotes, and the coyotes are a pain not just because they bother livestock and pets, but because of more people moving in who think they’re cute and should be left alone.

A good topic for an article, what makes an ideal Coyote gun & cartridge?

I’ll get the ball rolling with the good ‘ol AR-15 in 5.56/.223 (at least for hunting & varmint control!).

How about something more concealable if you’re out walking around the block with your dog? Do they respond to pepper spray if popping one with your 9mm is ‘socially unacceptable’? I also hear that they hunt in packs and I’m sure everyone remembers the Canadian singer stalked & killed by a pack in Cape Breton.

A 9mm Glock is perfectly serviceable against coyotes. I’d be hard pressed to imagine a situation where shooting one to defend your life or property would be illegal. If you’re being proactive, a .22LR will do just fine, but a 5.56×45 will get you more range and a more ethical kill. (A 77gr OTM round will more or less drop any of the little buggers with a single solid hit.)

I’ve never even heard a coyote where I’ve lived. I know they’ve been around everywhere I’ve ever lived, just not that close I guess. But where my dad lives is a different matter. He uses a .22 WMR. He says it only takes him one shot to drop the coyote.

The grammatical errors and misaligned lettering on protest signs are a direct result of criticism from the right that the protestors were showing up with identical professionally printed signs. In order to appear “grass roots”, they started making signs that includes “mistakes”.
It’s like when Hollywood started making TV shows with handheld cameras in the late 90s and would shake it around for that “raw footage” look. Irritated the shit out of me.
These are still Soros funded agitators. Don’t let the fake amateur looking signs fool you.

You credit them with more intelligence than they have! The misspelling and grammatical errors are the result of the wonderful public education system, a lifetime of illicit substance abuse and the lack of any sort of self pride, drive and determination to succeed.

Now, if it was one of those large BLM/ungovernable/antifa type ‘protests’ that used to magically have hundreds of professionally printed placards available, then I would 100% agree with your hypothesis that deliberate mistakes were incorporated in order to make them appear homespun and therefore spontaneous and not professionally organized.

Every time I see a story about a bunch of looneys protesting hunting or gun owners in general, especially when it involves abuse, vandalism, or even just generally aggressive behavior like that described in this story, I am struck by what seems to me to be an obvious truth: These people, who tend to claim that gun owners and enthusiasts are dangerous, crazy and bloodthirsty, must either be insane or lying.

If they truly believe that gun owners and hunters are dangerous and bloodthirsty then they are insane to attack them. If they don’t believe gun owners and hunters are actually dangerous to them (which the fact that they will get up in their faces, trespass on their property and strike at them or their vehicles seems to suggest) then they are simply lying.

Either way, I am getting tired of liars and lunatics attempting to impact my life in any fashion.

I’m a big fan of the Prius. Besides the 40 mpg mileage, the Prius also wins on price (deflated by $2 gasoline), minimal required maintenance, absurd long life (over-represented in vehicles with over 200,000 miles) and superior corrosion resistance. The Prius might be the cheapest vehicle you could ever drive. Leaving more money for guns.

If these SJWs were trespassing on private land, why were they not reported and arrested rather than allowing them to harass and threaten guests? I’d have been one PO’ed hombre if I’d been invited somewhere and got harassed and my car beat upon by some purple-haired nipple-ring crowd and nothing was done about it.

Reminds me of a joke I heard about Peta, Wolves, Game wardens and Wyoming Sheep farmers.
long story short, the Farmers were worried about the Wolves eating their sheep and the Peta rep at the meeting suggested that they should capture and neuter the wolves.
And one of the old ranchers says, “son, I don’t think you understand the problem. the wolves are eating our sheep not fucking them.”

I used to live just outside Springfield, IL. Coyotes and mountain lions were rumors 40 years ago. Feral dog packs, from puppies and pets thrown away by St.Louis. These dog packs grew so large the deer season was closed one year because dogs were attacking hunters.
The Illinois DNR closed deer hunting and told pat owners to keep their pets locked up at home.
A shoot to kill order was issued for any dog running loose in Southern Illinois. Hunters from Missouri and Kentucky were welcomed to join the eradication effort.
It is against the law in every state to go into the field and disrupt hunters and spook the game, so these people stay in town and wave pointless signs. I wonder do they buy hamburgers for lunch?

This reminds me of something that I saw on the news the other day. A doctor in Chicago (as seen on a surveillance camera )entered a building with what appeared to be a dog at his heals after the door shut behind him it began to growl and snarl at him he had the peace of mind to distract it by rattling his keys and got back out of the door it also went back out the door but it hung around outside the building for at least a hour before leaving. These morons have no idea what a coyote is capable of and that the only way to protect their existence is to control their population and to keep them afraid of humans so that they stay away from them.

These protesters should to be forced to watch hog, chicken, and beef processing plants to see what happens to keep food on their tables. These creatures aren’t predators in their backyard like coyotes.

I am pro abortion, I eat meat, I own a gun, I support hunting, and I have a college education. I am NOT opposed to killing coyotes. I do want to comment however, on the tasteless approach to these contests. The language of this article does nothing to defend or promote ethical hunting. Words like “clobbered” and phrases such as “over a quarter ton of coyote” do not demonstrate that you are an ethical hunter there to help. Go ahead and hunt the coyotes but perhaps try to not call them “predator killing contests”. Seriously you guys need a PR representative and some common sense and you wouldn’t see these protestors. And maybe don’t plan to hit protestors with your cars publicly on a thread after being so kind as to protect their pets from coyotes. They have a right to protest just as you do to hunt.
HSUS wasn’t there. They also haven’t spent money on this.
PETA is a group of crazy, insane people who believe animals have rights.
Stick to the facts and you’ll come across as a group that genuinely cares about people’s pets. There was an article written from a man running the contest in Marion that said the contest wouldn’t affect the population. This is crazy to put in writing if the purpose is to reduce population! Is it sport killing or ethical hunting?

I imagine sport hunting and ethical hunting have a large overlap, probably well over 90%. The Humane Society is about as bad as PETA in my experience. I haven’t had personal dealing with either, just reports of their behavior.